Changelog:

Version 4.0:

• Changed the phrasing of most entries in the Glossary.
• Tried to alter the tone of the document so that it would sound less pretentious.
• Included a section dedicated to the Violet/Lavender/Chocolate split.
• Greatly expanded and rearranged the section about Red Noise.
• Updated the "Outstanding Questions" section.

Upcoming Changes (Version 4.5):

• Creating a section to describe Palette's relationship with Bretta in more detail.
• Completely reformatting the second half of the document to focus around The Rot, what it could be, what could affect it, and brainstorming strategies for eliminating it at the source.

1: About the Manual

1.1: What it's For

Originally, I had the idea for writing this "Cyndi Manual" for the staff at Vive, so that they could take advantage of everything I knew about her alters and their conditions, and try to come up with more effective treatment plans than if they had to discover everything about Palette's System from scratch.

While that version went mostly ignored, I've continued to keep notes about my interactions with Palette and any new developments that could prove useful to professionals treating them.

This version is aimed at Cyndi's current therapists, Bonnie, Rodney and Paula, although I also encourage it to be freely shared amongst anyone else who sees Cyndi on a professional level (including with whoever runs her group therapy sessions). It includes a number of updates since the last major rewrite, including the splitting off of another Alter, but anyone who has read any previous versions ought to find most of the information here familiar.

1.2: Who I Am.

Let me make this completely clear. I am not in any way a mental health professional. I am not pretending to be a professional. I am not attending any formal psychology classes. I'm not a student. I have not, at any point, tried to fool Palette into thinking that I'm a professional. I'm just a friend of Cyndi's, who happened to have an interest in psychology, and have traditionally found it interesting to dip my toes into topics like what consciousness is, and how human perception can go wrong.

I might half-jokingly refer to her as my "patient," but this is mostly because of my Discord screen-name.

1.3: How I met Cyndi

I was introduced to Cyndi by a mutual friend of ours named Jay, who also suffers from DID, and seems to be much less self-aware about this fact. The two of them mutually belonged to the same online fandom but otherwise had little in common, from what I could tell, besides the presence of DID.

Living in Australia, it has been somewhat difficult to keep in regular contact with Cyndi, thanks to the difference in time zones, but since April of 2020, I have done my best to support her, encourage her personal growth and development, and have watched with some satisfaction as her local and online support group slowly started accumulating members.

1.4: The Palette Testing Server

Cyndi let it slip to me that she had dissociative Alters around late April of 2020. They were really embarassed about it at first, but they quickly started showing relief that they'd be able to finally drop the "Cutesy Cyndi" act, and let more of their real personalities show. They effectively re-introduced themselves to me as the System of alters, Palette, and this is the name I'll use to refer to them for the rest of this Manual.

When I told them about the Discord bot "Tupperbot," which is designed mostly for roleplay, they quickly discovered a similar bot, "PluralKit," and created their own Discord server (a requirement to make use of these bots) so that each Alter would be able to communicate with me using their own proxy account (explained later). Palette and I have communicated almost exclusively on that server since then, since it's an easy way for the Alters in her system to differentiate themselves, and express internal conflicts that might otherwise stay confined to Palette's head.

1.5: The Question of Whether the Colours and Cyndi's DID are/is "Real."

I've always been fairly open to the idea that there is no "Palette," and that Cyndi is just faking or role-playing for various reasons. I still don't think it's impossible for Cyndi to be faking, but the more I have come to interact with the Palette system, and the more DID-related articles, papers, videos and personal anecdotes I consume, the less and less likely this seems to become.

She is regularly accused of making up problems, physical or psychological, for attention; this happened at Vive, much to my disappointment, but the strongest accusations along these lines tend to come from her own family, especially her father. This will be explored later on in this document.

There are a number of unusual features about Palette's case, and I have also given them their own sections below. It should go without saying however, that I don't think these apparently uncommon characteristics invalidate the Alters' identities, or are suggestive of "Cyndi" simply inventing her conditon based on things "she" read on the Internet. If sympathy, attention or pity were really "Cyndi's" goal, there would be far, far easier ways of obtaining them, other than convincingly faking a System of extremely distinct personality states and keeping track of what each Alter is supposed to be able to remember, over the course of nearly a year, and keeping the same pretense consistent across multiple interpersonal relationships.

This is why, for the rest of this Manual, I intend to refer to Palette as though the validity of their DID and the existence of their Alters is a largely settled question.

2: Overview of the Palette System

This section isn't really intended to contain any information that I think is going to directly help to stop Palette's self-harm problem, but I do think that knowing who each Colour is, how they behave and interact with one another could be useful in treating their individual psychological problems. Besides, later sections which directly deal with the self-harm addiction are probably going to heavily reference elements of each Colour's personality and history, so I've positioned this section before all the others.

2.1: Glossary of Terms

Palette: The System's collective name for themselves. I will use this name, as well as they/them pronouns, throughout this manual, whenever I'm talking about Palette, the group.

Cyndi: The public face of the Palette system, which they use for shallow, everyday social interactions, and talking with people who don't believe that she really has DID, or that her Alters exist (i.e: her family). In this Manual, I will use the name "Cyndi" to refer to the body with that legal identity, when referring to events that happened before these different personality states manifested, or when speaking from the point of view of people who deny her DID, or don't know that she has the condition.

Colour: This word should be treated as being synonymous with "Alter," or more specifically, what I've seen referred to in the DID community as an "Apparently Normal Part." It seems like when they first became aware of each other, the Alters of the Palette System were not able to immediately think of names for themselves or each other, and chose to go by colours instead. Even after some of them chose more conventional names, they kept using a noticeably colour-themed naming schema when deciding what to call themselves, and so the term "Colour" gradually acquired its current meaning within their System. I will capitalise the term Colour throughout this document, when referring to an Alter, to avoid confusion with the more ordinary use of that word.

Proxy: The PluralKit and Tupperbox Discord bots effectively allow a single user to have mutliple false "accounts" which they can post messages from. While useful for text-based roleplay, both of these bots seem to have become massively popular among DID Systems, since it's an easy way for alters to speak "as themselves," without actually requiring them to register multiple Discord accounts. The "accounts" are called Proxies by PluralKit, and are differentiated from a regular user by a small bot label, which can be seen in the various screnshots I've included in this Manual. The bots cannot be made to work in Direct Messages, and must be invited to a server to make use of them.

Co-Consciousness: A fairly standard concept among DID communities, but I thought I would include it here for completeness; more than a single Colour can be "awake" at any one time, and it's actually fairly unusual for only a single Colour to be active in Palette's mind, unless it's very late at night. It's not uncommon for one Colour to be talking and carrying on a conversation while another has control of the hands, and is doing something else entirely.

Mint Leaf: A sort of distortion of the world around her, which Palette experiences during psychotic episodes. It's also the name of an entity that they perceive during these episodes (or perhaps, perceived, since it's apparently been a long time since this entity was last seen.) Both the distorted reality and the Entity are phenomena that happen to the entire System, and have sections dedicated to them below.

Red Noise: Not technically considered a Colour, Red Noise does not seem to be an Apparently Normal Part. Palette and I have been unable to quite work out what she is, but she appears to be a kind of posession-form Persecutor Alter, and behaves as though she's the manifestation of Cyndi's self-harm addiction. She may, or may not be an Emotional Part (contrasting with the other Colours being Apparently Normal Parts). It's also possible that she might be a creation of Palette's psychosis. Noise has her own, fairly extensive chapter dedicated to her below.

The Rot: An ever-present, chronic, seemingly psychosomatic pain felt in the pit of Cyndi's stomach, or around her heart. It's been described as a tight squeezing, or as feeling like her organs are rotting away, hence its usual name. This sensation is experienced by all Colours, all the time, to varying extents. Cutting themselves is the only thing that provides some temporary relief. It's true nature is something I still haven't worked out; it could just be withdrawal from the pleasurable high created by cutting, but there are other potential causes, which I hope to explore in much more detail in future versions of this Manual.

2.2: History

If Violet (or Lavender, or Coco) has not already shown you the System's art journal (which I recommend that you ask about anyway), the rough timeline is this:

Around 2014, Cyndi was doing very unwell mentally - she was starving herself, filled with self-loathing for being different in some way (trans? Or something else?), and apparently believed that other people would also hate her for being different in that way.

This places her at around 11 or 12 years old when, in 2015, she decided she'd kill herself. She was saved at the last minute by a text from her friend Marz, and she abandoned her suicide attempt when she realised the mistake that she was about to make.

But this seems to be the point where Cyndi's conscious awareness split into Palette (this is certainly the moment when the various Colours believe that Cyndi's consciousness split, though the possibility remains that they could be mistaken). Everywhere else in this Manual, I've referred to that incident as ""The Split."

It seems that the Colours didn't really know about each others' existence for a while, but eventually the lapses in memory and the consequences of each others' psychological problems started building up. Since then, they've been taught to cooperate well enough to create a single, public-facing persona of "Cyndi," but this persona appears to be mostly a fabrication, with the Palette system remaining composed of nine very different individuals.

2.3:Individual Members of the System

General Notes

These are not intended to be complete descriptions of each individual member, but more of a basic overview, along with some notes regarding my experiences with each Colour. They're intended to give a rough overview of each Colour's basic personality traits, to provide an idea of how best to approach them individually, and to note anything about them I think could be worth exploring further.

Please note: Yes, yes, I'm aware the Myers-Briggs test barely has any predictive utility. This is why I'm slowly trying to get each Colour to take a version of the Big 5 test instead. However, the Colours had taken the Myers-Briggs test before they met me, so the results were already available.

Also Note: Since I wrote the first edition of this Manual, the Colour known as Violet has split even further into Chocolate (who goes by the nickname "Coco") and Lavender. They occaisonally re-form into a single personality though, so I have elected to keep Violet's section intact here.

Violet

• The "artist of the group" - skilled at coming up with character designs.
• Very gifted writer.
• Aspiring animator.
• Seems to mostly be a visual thinker. She's the one behind all the art journals, and frequently spends her time doodling and coming up with illustrations.
• Has a noticeable stammer when stressed or nervous; like the other Colours, she transcribes this verbal tic into her written messages, making it easy to tell her tone of voice even through purely text-bsaed messages.
• Really susceptible to Red Noise. I don't know what it is about Vive that shuffled things around, but after coming home from there, Violet became the Colour who was targeted the most often, for some reason.
• Was fairly averse to speaking out loud, preferring to write. When speaking, she was most comfortable using Japanese.
• She feels as though she's a native Japanese speaker. This is obviously not true, and what seems to have happened is that at some point, Cyndi learned Japanese to a high degree of fluency, and forgot the process of learning when the Split happened, even though Violet did retain the language.
• Reverts to Japanese under pressure, or when she finds it difficult to express something in English. Most of the time, I can get an idea of what she's saying through Google Translate, although this obviously doesn't work for handwritten notes or when she speaks Japanese over voice.
• Apparently the best of the Colours at dealing with psychotic episodes. She will sometimes voluntarily switch in when an episode occurs, because she is able to experience them without freaking out publicly and causing a scene.
• Extremely touch-averse, especially when it comes to touch from men, due to a harrowing experience with someone at her school called Dmitri.
• Violet seems to be almost completely asexual - not only this, but she seemed to harbor some rather negative associations with sex. This may or may not have been because of Dmitri. It could have been caused by an unrelated trauma, Cyndi's religious Mormon upbringing, or something else entirely - we have no idea whether or not her asexuality was a symptom of anything. All I can say is that she seemed to perceive anyone who has a strong interest in sex as "tainted," "impure" or somehow untrustworthy, even if that sexuality was not directed at her, the other Colours, or their shared body.
• Was easily startled by loud noises.
• Was one of the Colours who was switched in most often, despite being one of the more introverted personalites in Palette's system.
• After Vive (or possibly a little before their admittance), Violet confessed that part of her didn't really want to give up cutting, and she was finding it hard to desire to stay clean. This meant that, subconsciously, she began sabotaging the things I would try and do to help her in very minor ways that even she wasn't consciously aware of, until she had already done it.

Lavender

• Split off from Chocolate during a conversation with a mutual friend, Roxas. The cause of the split, according to the screenshots Roxas shared, appeared to be extremely powerful cognitive dissonance surrounding the question of whether or not Violet deserved to be loved, and shown any kind of affection.
• Lavender seems to be the part that completely rejected the idea that Violet deserved love, and as a result, appears to contain Violet's self-loathing, nervousness and overly-apologetic nature in a hyper-distilled, extremely concentrated form.
• My first impressions of her were that Lavender was essentially Violet, but with any self-confidence, emotional growth, will to live, and acceptance of love completely bleached out of her, leaving behind a hollow, gaunt, pale, and perpetually terrified husk of her former self, who seems to perceive her very existence as a mistake that needs to be constantly, unendingly apologised for, and desperately desired to never, ever give up cutting.
• She perceives (or perhaps, perceived) herself as "the bad parts of Violet," and yet she retains a number of skills Violet possessed, including the ability to speak, read and understand Japanese, and the ability to animate, as well as many positive traits, including high levels of empathy for others, and a very polite nature.
• She initially was unable to draw, but has been slowly re-learning the skill with the help of Coco.
• Absolutely terrified of loud noises. I don't remember Violet reacting nearly as strongly, and it seemed to take louder and more unexpected noises in order to provoke a fear reaction.
• She remains extremely agreeable and kind, and occasionally does display moments of surprising emotional strength when it comes to defending and giving support to other people.
• Like when she was Violet, she remains one of the most active Colours, often being one of the last to fall asleep, and the first to wake.
• Is very, very quick to blame herself for things going wrong (even, sometimes, when there is no possible way that the events could be her fault), is extremely apologetic about seemingly everything, and seems to often forget why she's supposed to be trying to avoid cutting in the first place, having expressed multiple times that she no longer wants to give the act up.
• During a particularly long clean streak, she began expressing frighteningly violent suicidal ideation, and there didn't seem to be anything that I, or any of her friends could do to prevent this. This didn't seem to be related purely to the Rot either; Lavender seems (or seemed, at the time) to firmly cling onto the belief that she simply should not be.
• She is slowly learning to be less apologetic and seems to be trying to curb her self-hatred, though I get the feeling that this will be an incredibly slow process, with many unforeseen setbacks lying in wait in the future.

Chocolate

• Initially chose the name "Xiketic" (apparently a term for an almost black shade of purple), before deciding to distance herself from any prior association with Violet, seemingly in an attempt to individuate, and just be her own person. I have yet to explore why she wishes to do this in any great detail.
• That's partly because she very rarely makes an appearance in the server, at least compared to Lavender, and it might be necessary to simply ask for her to come forward directly.
• Has completely lost any knowledge of Japanese.
• Initially retained the most skill in drawing, but completely forgot how to animate.
• She almost gives the impression of having been "cleansed" of the insecurities and self-loathing that she felt as Violet, but I've spoken only rarely to her, and haven't explicitly talked about the ways in which she is different from the Colour she used to be a part of. Expect updates to this section in future versions of this Manual, as I learn more about her.
• One very important difference is that Chocolate is able to accept love from others without feeling as though she's undeserving. While she accepts the possibility that the love she receives may be undeserved, she doesn't see it as the default option, and is able to simply accept affection relatively healthily. This seems to pretty much confirm the reason for her split from Lavender.

Orange/Fox

• Confident and outgoing.
• Also, snarky, sarcastic, and generally quite laid back.
• Easily the Colour with the best sense of humour.
• Was interested in fighting and combat for a long time. She seemed to feel, once, as though she was destined to live the life of some kind of YA-novel protagonist, and so learned to fight in order to prepare for this. She was later disappointed when she turned out not to live in that kind of universe, but she still appears to box sometimes, for stress relief.
• Easily bored.
• Fox's self-image is of a butch lesbian, and she's always been depicted as such in art drawn by the other members of the System.
• Doesn't appear to have a lot of patience for academia; she seems to be more practical than that.
• Seems to be the most interested in sex out of all the Colours; the joke goes that Cyndi's entire sex drive ended up in Fox. She certainly seems to have the fewest hangups about it, isn't embarrassed to talk about it, and is the only Colour so far to make openly sexual jokes.
• Used to be in a relationship with Violet. I'm still not sure about the nature of romatnic relationships between dissociative Alters, particularly when the System in question doesn't seem to have any kind of vivid internal "Wonderland." However, the relationship fell apart when Violet split up into Chocolate and Lavender.
• Doesn't seem to be especially open when it comes to talking about her feelings, but there's the possibility that she just isn't especially open to talking about them with me.
• Mildly susceptible to Red Noise. I think that I've only seen one instance where she's been overcome, and cut, since I met her.

Yellow/Dandelion

• Used to be one half of Rose, who split long before I ever met Palette.
• She's the "child" of the group, in that she has the most childish personality. I used to think that her mental age fluctuated a great deal, but either I was entirely wrong about this, or she seems to have stabilised over the last couple of months.
• Bubbly, energetic, and very stereotypically "cute," Dandy does have her darker elements, including a truly unbelievable amount of self-loathing, and Trait Agreeableness so outlandishly high that it easily verges on the pathological.
• She also doesn't seem to see anything wrong with this, having voiced the belief on more than one occasion that she "deserves it," because she's a "monster."
• Her moods can occasionally be unstable, and she can be easily upset.
• She seems to be the most strongly affected by the body's psychotic episodes and hallucinations.
• One particularly horrifying event involved Dandy hallucinating a girl who pierced her own arm with a crowbar, and forcefully dug out the bones of her arm, snapping them, which Dandy was unable to stop. I'm not sure how well Dandy understands that the girl was not real, but it was clear the last time we touched on the topic, that she still felt an enormous amount of guilt over not being able to do anything to stop this from happening (this seems to be part of the reason she considers herself a monster).
• I get the impression that no matter what words are coming out of her mouth, the real reason she suffers from so much self hate is buried much deeper in her brain than anything Dandy herself has access to, and anything she says out loud is just a rationalisation, or a kind of denial.
• Her favourite instrument is the ukulele. Apparently capable of playing the guitar as well, but the Uke is still her preference. Possibly because it fits her self image better, as it is the "cuter" instrument.
• Being "the cute and innocent one" - having that role - does seem to be important to her. I haven't really dug very deeply into why though. It might have something to do with her dislike of Ashley.
• Despite this, she's also expressed a wish to grow up and mature, several times. She knows this conflicts with her desire to remain "herself," and from the way she's talked about it, "remaining Dandy" seems to mean retaining her role as "the cute innocent one" of the group.
• It looks like for some time, I underestimated her ability to understand complex emotions. Particularly under stressful situations, she usually only spoke in terms of really simplistic feelings, i.e. "Happy," "Sad," "Hurting."
• Lately, she seems to have undergone a surprising amount of growth. I still don't think she's fantastic at grasping nuance, but she has improved, noticeably, from the very black-and-white thinking that used to dominate her mind.
• Used to have very strongly negative feelings towards Ashley (Grey), thinking that she was "creepy" and "evil." It's unclear to what extent she still believes this. She does seem to be trying to get along with Ashley better, but I don't think her beliefs have fundamentaly changed; I suspect she's just stopped expressing them as often. That's one of the areas I'm going to try and focus more on in the future.
• Cannot drive.
• Is a night owl, remaining awake and online later than the others tend to do.
• Often sleepy, and lacking in energy.
• Obsessed with pretzels, whether sweet or savoury.
• Has a disturbing tendency to stick up for people who wrong her, or are actively cruel towards her, making up all sorts of excuses for them, and preferring to think that she's the one who has done something wrong, and therefore deserves to be treated that way. Trying to reason her out of this position has, in the past, resulted in pretty much endless logical loops and rationalisations.
• Like Lavender however, her high Agreeableness means that she's extremely empathetic, and always has a strong desire to help people, even if she doesn't know them all that well.

Black/Blake

• Her Myers-Briggs Type is "Entrepreneur" (ESTP-T)
• Seems to prefer they/them pronouns, but "she/her" doesn't seem to be a problem. I will refer to Blake as "she" for the rest of this document, to avoid confusion with the plural "they."
• She has a strong aversion to speaking, even through text, but on the occasions that she does speak, she can deliver absolutely withering comebacks; I've described her as a kind of "verbal sniper," and she seems to like this description.
• According to Rojo, the reason she doesn't talk is so that nobody can use her words against her, as if every single word she uttered was a new potential vulnerability that other people could exploit. I don't know if it's going to be possible to work with her on that, but it's likely that she would still prefer silence, even if this fear could be greatly lessened through therapy.
• Suffers (or once suffered - I'm not completely sure) from bulimia.
• Film buff.
• Enjoys retro things, including audio equipment, music and games.
• She is usually very chill, and rarely angry. However, when something that they perceive as injustices happen to others, Blake may emerge and make her absolutely seething displeasure known. One particularly memorable incident was when she was describing goings-on at the Vive program, and ranting about the unprofessional, or simply unfair things that sometimes happened to the other patients.

White/Whitney

• The "mother" of the group. Her Myers-Briggs Type is "Defender," (ISFJ-T) which fits with this.
• Enjoys cleaning and interior design, tries to look after everyone else physically by taking care of the body.
• Usually keeps her emotions in check, and is good at mediating between different Colours, when they have disputes.
• However, I almost never see her in the server, and I don't know how often she's usually co-conscious.
• Suffers (or once suffered) from anorexia.
• The anorexia and love of cleaning might come from the same source - something of an orderly/perfectionistic mindset which causes her to want to "purify" anything that's imperfect or unclean. This is little more than speculation on my part though.
• The best singer of the System, and also the Colour with the neatest handwriting; if she's co-conscious, the other Colours usually have her take care of any physical writing.

Red/Rojo

• The only fully male Colour of the group so far.
• Physically active, seemingly enjoys exercise. Has complained at least once though, that the thick scar tissues covering Cyndi's arms, and potentially invading her muscles, make exercise difficult.
• Hotheaded and a little bit brash, he is the Colour that most easily expresses anger and frustration, and sticks up for the group as a whole (most easily able to identify unfair treatment towards the System). He swears frequently, and is the second-lowest in Trait Agreeableness.
• Apparently a bit paranoid.
• Extremely protective.
• Can be apathetic and lazy about things, including important things, like replenishing first aid supplies. I remember an incident in which he went out to buy ingredients, and even though we both knew they were running low on supplies, and I reminded him to pick some up, he bought only the food, and when I reminded him to buy them in the parking lot, he came to the conclusion that it would be too much effort to turn around and walk back into the store.
• An excellent chef, with an insatiable appetite. Loves talking about and making food. If he's co-conscious with any of the other Colours, talking about cooking is a fairly reliable way to get his attention.
• Becomes very competitive when playing games.
• May be one of the most competitive Colours generally, as low Agreeableness would predict.
• He seems to surface whenever the System needs to vent about their parents. Talking with him may be a good way to get the System to open up about any repressed or unexplored emotions, since he doesn't appear to see much point in filtering or censoring himself for other peoples' convenience, and is able to recognize a lot of what has happened to the System as being unfair.

Turquoise

• Aka "Quoise."
• For a long time, I thought she was immune to Red Noise, but it just seems like Noise targets her much less frequently. I don't think she has actually engaged in self-harm, because she is introspective enough that she can't just subconsciously be made to do things.
• A combination of two Colours - Blue(Sky) and Green(Emerald).
• Does not have a recorded Myers-Briggs Type since she came into being after the Sky and Emerald took the test. However, Ashley observed that both Sky and Emerald had the same result, that being "Architect." (INTJ-A) She hypothesised that this was a factor behind their fusion, and predicted that the next Colours to fuse, if there was to be another event like that, would be between Rojo and Blake.
• Seems to know the most trivia, and is the best gamer of the group.
• Programmer/Developer.
• Cool and rational; doesn't display a lot of exitement very often, but she does still get very engrossed in things which interest her; entire afternoons and evenings can disappear when she's working on a creative project.
• She also makes board games, and is the other retro enthusiast of the System.
• She came into existence quite recently - it was sudden and unexpected fusing between Sky and Emerald which led to the conversation in which Palette revealed to me that they suffered from DID in the first place.
• Seems to be one of the Colours most interested in, and knowledgeable about psychology.
• Level-headed, stoic and analytical, not easily possessed by overwhelming positive or negative emotion.
• Enjoys proofreading.
• Immediately after the fusion between Sky and Emerald, Turquoise (if I recall correctly) didn't remember any of the two Colours' individual memories, and came into the world almost as a complete amnesiac, which seems to have been a rather harrowing experience. She seems to have begun integrating their memories as time has progressed though, knowing things without being conscious of how she knows them, or possessing skills that Sky or Emerald possessed. (I believe Emerald used to be the most skilled gamer of the group, and the title has now passed to Turquoise. I seem to remember Turquoise being skilled at games she has no conscious memory of having played before. This is remeniscent of the way Violet just "knows" Japanese. or Ashley recognizes certain pieces of music, despite not having a conscious memory of hearing them before)

Grey/Ashley

• AKA "Ash."
• Was simply known as "Grey" until a few weeks before Cyndi's admission to Vive.
• The other half of Rose.
• According to the rest of the System, Ashley is the part of Rose that embraced her self-harm and bloodlust instead of rejecting it.
• As a consequence, she was largely shunned by the other Colours, and from what I understood, tended to exist in the background of Cyndi's brain, rarely being allowed to switch in and take control of the body in case she tried to cut herself, or said/did something "creepy" that would alienate Cyndi socially.
• For some time, Red Noise was her only "company," and Ashley has picked up quite a few of her mannerisms as a result, including a rather stereotypical anime-esque laugh (in text, this is usually rendered as "Ufufufu~") and a sickly-sweet, almost flirty way of talking. The latter has lessened somewhat since I first began talking with her.
• She seems to be the Colour most addicted to cutting (or was, before Cyndi's admission to Vive - it's possible that this role might have been taken by Dandy now).
• She is also extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about blades of all descriptions. Is almost compelled to maintain, polish and sharpen any mistreated knife that she sees, and a badly treated blade will almost be seen as an abused creature, needing to be nursed back to health.
• May have a somewhat unexplored love of children's literature. I don't know how much of this is due to the fact that Dandy is her former "other half." Ashley seems to enjoy reading out loud (I don't know whether that's a general thing, or whether she liked reading to me specifically), and may enjoy having people read to her as well.
• Certainly has a lot of largely unexplored creative potential; when she decides to write poetry or prose, she is exceptionally skilled, being able to easily convey some very powerful emotions.
• Seems to be somewhat nihilistic, in the sense that she doesn't seem to believe things have inherent value. If I remember correctly, she began trying to avoid cutting only because the other Colours, and Cyndi's friends wanted her to stop, and otherwise tended to ask why the habit was considered "wrong" at all. When Noise possesses and speaks through Ashley, she tends to see things from that same viewpoint.
• She sometimes speaks in a way that results in her saying technically true things, in a way that might appear to be alarming, or that she's not taking her attempts to stop cutting seriously. For example, she freely admits that she loved and enjoys cutting herself. This is true, in the sense that cutting provides a natural hit of endorphins and enjoyable physical responses. Regardless of how seriously she's trying to quit, when she does relapse, she sees no point in denying the immediate, here-and-now fact that she's feeling amazing, enjoying the unrivaled high that comes with self-harm, and savouring the relief from the Rot.
• While she admits that her love of blades would probably lose some or most of its luster if she permanently lost her addiction, this hobby doesn't seem to be entirely because of her self destructive tendencies. She also seems to appreciate knives for their physical qualities, their beauty and the craftsmanship that goes into making, sharpening and polishing them.
• One of my goals with Ashley is to get her to the point where she can safely own a knife collection, without the temptation of using them on herself. Ashley and I are both aware that this could take many years, if it happens at all.
• Part of what seems to have been effective in reducing her desire to cut so far is giving her things other than cutting to enjoy, and derive satisfaction from in life. I've encouraged her to explore as many methods of self-expression as possible, and tried to improve relations between her and the other Colours.

2.4: Fusions and Splits

I originally gave this section only a small amount of detail, mostly bcause I didn't think the phenomenon was especially related to the self-harm problem, but also because there was a lot about it that I didn't understand. The latter is still true, but some of the Colours have clarified a few of my earlier questions, at least to some extent, so I'll include everything I know about the process of fusing/splitting within the Palette system, mostly for the sake of completeness.

2.4.1: Permanent Merging

Turquoise is the only example of this phenomenon so far. Since I've become aware of Palette as a DID System, Turquoise has never once broken apart into Sky and Emerald, and while I don't know if Turquoise herself has any hypotheses, I imagine that the main reason behind this event, besides their very similar personality "types" was the fact that whatever memories or emotions they may have been created to process had effectively been dealt with, and maintaining the mental barriers keeping them apart wasn't necessary any more.

Their fusion into one identity came completely out of nowhere, and also came with a feeling of near total amnesia, as mentioned in the previous section. Since then, Turquoise has regained acces to the memories of the Colours that she is made up of. However, it seems like she still doesn't really perceive them as hers.

I don't know whether or not future permanent merges like it would necessarily induce the same amnesia-like effect, but I do know that there are some Colours which are frightened of that happening to them, which is part of the reasoning behind their reluctance to pursue reintegration.

2.4.2: Temporary Fusions

Much more common are temporary fusions between Colours, which usually seem to happen when they're working closely with one another on something, i.e. when they're both working towards the same goal, or feeling similar emotions.

These fusions never last long, however. Invariably, one Colour ends up rejecting the other, because of some irreconcilable cognitive differences between them, and the fused identity falls apart along certain, seemingly predictable "seams." These are areas of cognitive dissonance or extreme disagreement between the Colours, which have repeatedly surfaced over the time that I've known them, and which seem unlikely to go away any time soon, without some kind of conscious deliberate intervention, and effort from both Colours in the pairing.

To give an example, Dandy and Ashley sometimes fuse again to become Rose. In this case, it's almost always Dandy that rejects Ashley (rarely, their identities separate again for other reasons), and this usually happens because Rose ends up having a thought which the Dandy part of her (for want of a better term) rebels against, finding it digsusting, creepy or monstrous.

Violet's "seams" appear to be a little more complicated than that, but to me, it looks like they revolve around the themes of whether or not Violet deserves to be loved, whether life is worth living, or whether it's worth doing difficult things, like resisting the urge to cut.

These temporary mergings between identities tend to happen gradually, over the course of a few minutes, without either Colour in the pair noticing that it's happening. Lavender has written a description of fusion which seems to describe the process as semi-conscious, and once the process begins, it tends to reinforce itself until some new cognitive dissonance forces those parts of Cyndi's mind apart again. Another Colour - I believe it was Turquoise - described the process in her own way, but for some reason, that conversation has been lost.

Fusing on command seems largely impossible, and so far, only Blake has shown the capacity to leave such a pairing whenever she wishes.

2.4.3: Fusion Table

Each temporary Fusion pair has their own name, which Turquoise took the trouble of cataloguing in the table below. I'm including this here just in case any such fusion happens in person, during a therapy session, or something like that.

2.4.4: Uniqueness of the Phenomenon

I'm aware that there might be a great deal of skepticism about this whole fusion business, and I can definitely understand that, since I haven't ever seen references to it in any psychological literature (admittedly, I've read much less of it than I would like).

I've thought of a few possible reasons for this, and a couple of the other unusual features of her System, but suffice to say that I don't think this fusion of identities is grounds for dismissing Cyndi as faking for attention, as the staff at Vive appear to have done.

It's possible that DDNOS is a better description of Palette's condition, or that the increasing frequency of temporary fusions means that Palette's collective mind is gradually working though the issues that keep their identities separate.

It's something which merits more investigation, I think, though it shouldn't take priority over eliminating the Rot.

2.4.5: Unanswered Questions:

My personal goals with regards to Colour-fusion are as follows:

• Acquire as many descriptions of how it subjectively feels to fuse as I can, from as many Colours as possible. Add them to this Manual.
• Find out what causes the fusions to happen, in as much detail as possible. Also find out what stops them from fusing in situations where they want to, and cannot.
• Find out each fusions' "seams," and whether these can be resolved through talk therapy, CBT, DBT or EMDR.
• Figure out how common temporary identity fusion is among other Systems who claim to be multiples.
• Investigate the amnesia that happened when Turquoise came into being and brainstorm ways of preventing it, should any more permanent fusions happen in future.

2.5: Red Noise

I've referenced Red Noise multiple times by now, and this is because she's rather central to the self-harm problem. Half of what perpetuates the addiction is the Rot, which will get its own section below. The other half appears to be Red Noise. But as with everything else in this Manual, that's only the impression that I've managed to form so far.

Still, this section contains pretty much everything I know about Red Noise so far.

2.5.1: Quick Overview

Noise seems to be the personification of the body's addiction to cutting. She is not as yet, considered part of the group of Colours which forms Palette; both she and the core group of Colours perceive Noise as something of an outsider, needing to latch onto another identity and "possess" them in order to speak and act.

She's been referred to as a "mental parasite," and this description isn't completely without merit. Mutliple Colours, notably Turquoise, have suggested that Noise doesn't really exist in the same way that they do - that she may simply be a product of addiction and psychosis. From what I've been told, Noise is unique in that she disappears when Palette takes their anti-psychotic medications, but I don't know if this refers to her voice and influence, or if it simply means that the stop hallucinating her being physically in the room with them.

In Violet and Lavender's art, Noise is depicted as an indistinct, shadowy, human-shaped figure wreathed in a substance that resembles black flames, and she's always drawn as floating in mid-air. According to Noise herself though, this is just an artistic rendition; she doesn't perceive herself as having a physical form at all, unlike the other Colours who each have their own distinct self-image. Instead, Noise prefers to see herself as borrowing the bodies of her "puppets." This might give some minor hints as to her true nature.

2.5.2: History of Self-Harm and Red Noise

It seems like Red Noise only started manifesting as a distinct entity around 2018, coinciding with Cyndi's earliest psychotic episodes. The System had struggled with self harm long before this, though initially, Rose was the only Colour who used to cut.

The cognitive dissonance that arose from this habit is what caused Rose to split in to Dandy (who initially rejected cutting), and Ashley, then only called Grey (who embraced the habit with a frightening passion).

Grey soon began to manipulate the other Colours into cutting as well, pretending to be their own internal narrative while co-conscious, using gaslighting and manipulation to get them similarly addicted. Eventually she stopped doing this, but by that point, the damage was already done. The entire System had become dependent on cutting by this point, and would suffer from Rot whenever they were forced to go without.

For this reason, Red Noise has called Grey "the prophet of her love" - a label which Ashley is none too fond of any more, since she herself has begun to try and stop cutting.

2.5.3: Noise's Goals

Her main goal seems to be to keep Cyndi cutting, and to help "guide" her in avoiding and ignoring the people around her who tell her that cutting themselves is wrong.

It might be that this isn't actually the case. More recent conversations with Noise suggest that perpetuating the addiction is secondary to her real goal, which is to keep the Rot at bay and prevent the suffering that it causes, by providing at least temporary relief, irrespective of the fact that the other people in Palette's life tell her that cutting is a bad way of going about this.

If Noise is to be believed (and I take everything she says with a grain of salt), she actually tried a number of other ways of getting the Rot to subside, but none of them worked. This included reaching out to friends, playing games for hours on end, experimenting with pornography, getting her into a relationship, remaining mute, getting into fights, and listening to music. Of course, before I believe this list, I would ideally want to confirm it with at least one other Colour, but this conversation, at least, has gotten me thinking that she might not be entirely malicious.

Noise herself doesn't seem to have any other goals besides "keeping Palette happy." She has no ambitions of her own, and seemingly no interest in experiencing ordinary, everyday life for herself. She doesn't show any interest in entertainment, food, interpersonal relationships or creative projects. In fact, she seems to view them as distractions from some imagined "ideal" life of pure, endless pleasure that Cyndi could feel if she was just able to cut all the time.

2.5.4: Personality

Noise presents herself as a loving, caring figure, wanting only to make the System "happy," and frequently suggesting to Palette that the people in her life who are trying to stop the self-harm addiction don't really know what she needs, and that Noise is the only one who actually understands them.

From the outside, of course, she comes off very differently. Controlling, possessive and dominant, she tends to speak with a tone of voice that suggests deliberate, calculated sweetness, or perhaps, that she is simply above her conversational partner, no matter who it might happen to be. I have compared her voice to a "soft dominatrix," and some of the Colours agree with that description, and some of her mannerisms seem almost like those of a cliche villainess, which I have my own guesses about (see the section concerning the true nature of Noise below).

There has been one interesting exception to Noise portraying herself as "always in control." It happened quite early in my friendship with Palette, when I engaged Noise in conversation for so long that she began to feel like her own individual - as though she no longer needed to possess another Colour to maintain her own existence. This possibility seemed to terrify her, partly because it would mean losing control of her "puppets," but also (apparently) because the prospect of truly existing, and being subject to the ordinary human condition, was frightening to an entity that perceives itself the way she does.

Despite not wanting to be a Colour, she has recently taken to impersonating them, using their proxies, trying to talk like them, and using their preferred Discord emotes. These attempts to pass herself off as someone else usually fail, but she should still not be underestimated.

2.5.5: Noise's Behaviour, Personality and Motivations

Noise spends almost all of her time focusing her attention either on the currently fronting Colour, or another who is co-conscious, either to try and make them cut, or to get them to fantasise about doing so. If one of the Colours has recently given in, Noise tends to disappear, though sometimes she does remain to converse (or gloat) over Discord, or voice chat.

Noise perceives the normal Colours as needing "help" in order to cut, seeing her behaviour as almost maternal, or protective. The fact that Palette is trying to give up the habit means, to Noise, that they need to be actively encouraged in their cutting, so that they can be "brave" enough to make more numerous and deeper lacerations, to ignore those who try to stop them from cutting, and to push past any fears they may have about continuing the habit.

If what she says is to be believed, Noise perceives cutting, not as self harm, but an expression of pure love and affection. On more than one occasion, she has criticised me and Palette's other friends for "depriving" her, and has suggested that cutting is something which is as vital to Palette as food and water is for ordinary people.

She seems to operate on a completely backwards sense of what most people would consider "good" or "virtuous." Her definitions of what constitutes "bravery," "potential," "sacrifice" and "happiness" seem twisted in on themselves, for the purposes of perpetuating the addiction.

For example, Red Noise has insisted that the damage caused by cutting is the price that must be paid for "happiness," and references the idea that in order to achieve one's full potential, there must be sacrifice. In other words, rather than demonstrating the virtue of delaying gratification and sacrificing present happiness for future prosperity, Noise's idea of bravery and potential is sacrificing the future for the present. To her, self-control and restraint appear to be enemies, which must be slain if happiness is to be achieved. It might be important to note that these conversations tend to happen when she's possessing Ashley - I don't know whether she would keep the same opinions if she was speaking through someone else.

Red Noise on Sacrifice

In a rather post-modernist kind of way, Noise has also proposed that there is no inherent reason why cutting for pleasure is bad, while other forms of indulging in pleasure are good. It's as though she perceives some hypocritical double-standard, and refuses to change her mind just because other people are trying to make Palette live by their standards. She has even compared cutting to other activities that can cause pain and harm to a body, like full-contact sports, or boxing. She argues that one of these activities being vilified while the other is celebrated makes no sense, and that the distinction between them is mostly arbitrary.

She's also suggested that the Colours only really try to stop cutting for other people's sakes, and that continuing to deprive them of cutting is akin to deliberately cutting off an ordinary person from food, water or air.

Noise Referencing Whitney's Anorexia

I honestly do not know whether she genuinely perceives things this way, or simply uses it as a justification to continue perpetuating her own existence, and the body's dependence on cutting. However, the more I learn about Cyndi's life and background, the more I think Noise's intentions are more or less genuine, even if her methods of making Cyndi "happy" are extremely destructive and maladaptive.

Noise has even suggested that, in a hypothetical scenario where the Rot disappeared, she would probably not mind the idea of becoming an Apparently Normal Part, and abandoning her current role. But she stresses that guaranteeing the System's "happiness" is more important to her.

Noise on the Possibility of Giving Up Control

2.5.6: Attacks

An "attack" is any situation where Noise focuses a significant amount of attention on one Colour in particular, trying to force them to cut by any means necessary.

They usually happen in the early evening, or late at night, and usually begin in the same way; an auditory and/or tactile hallucination which sounds similar to a waterfall or rainstorm, and feels "like television static," or pins and needles. In the case of the auditory hallucination, it tends to slowly grow louder, until it blocks out real sounds in Palette's physical environment, and in the case of the tactile hallucination, this feeling of "static" begins in one place, and eventually grows to envelop and "embrace" the entire body, as though Red Noise was trying to hug them.

Usually, attacks don't manifest any more intensely than this, but for Danelion and possibly Ashley, Red Noise seems to be a fully manifested presence - a hallucination that they can perceive as being in the same room as them. (Violet's art may give some clue as to what she looks like during these hallucinations, but as far as I remember, I haven't actually tried to confirm this.)Turquoise speculates that this is because Dandy has always been the most sensitive to psychotic episodes - something which I'll also cover in a later section.

Sometimes, in rare instances, she may take over the target Colour's entire personality, especially if I, or her other friends are actively trying to prevent Palette from cutting. Speaking through her chosen target, she can converse either via voice chat or text while still maintaining pressure on her target. It's not completely clear why she chooses to engage in conversation, but my suspicion is that it's part of an attempt to demoralise whoever is trying to stop her, and convince them that it's pointless, or even actively harmful to Palette, to resist Noise's will.

I'm not completely sure whether Noise choosing to retreat from an attack causes Palette's self-harm urges to disappear, or weaken. From past experiences, it seems like the urges are at the very least easier to manage after a retreat, but once again, this is something that I haven't really confirmed.

If Noise succeeds in her attack, Noise usually retreats, even in situations where she has seized full control of the body. Sometimes though, she remains in control, either to gloat, further demoralise Palette's friends, or simply to continue a conversation she thought was interesting.

2.5.7: True Nature of Red Noise

Exactly what Noise is is a subject that I've done a lot of speculating about, and still haven't reached any satisfying conclusions on. After my first few interactions, I thought she might have simply been a Colour that was not recognised by the others as a legitimate part of the System.

Later, I thought that she might have been some manifestation of a Jungian shadow, sustained and given a voice by psychosis.

Both of these seem to be wrong - my most recent hypothesis is that Noise falls into the category of "Persecutor" Alter, or is more similar to an "Emotional Part", as opposed to an "Apparently Normal Part." It doesn't seem to be that uncommon for some alters to take the form of demons, or evil spirits, and this is definitely what Noise has been described as by some of the Colours; subjectively, they feel like she's something alien and foreign, corrupting and possessing. All the art and writing that the System has produced about Noise depicts her in this way; a shadow, latching on from the outside and taking control.

Certain conversations that I've had with Palette have gotten me wondering whether Noise really is an unrecognised Alter, a maladaptive reward system personified by psychosis, or whether each individual Colour has their own "Noisy state," which manifests whenever the urge to self-harm arises. I have no idea how I could meaningfully tell the difference between these possibilities, but it might be useful to know if "Noisy" is just another emotion that the Colours experience, just like "Hungry" or "Tired," which has been given a voice and mannerisms by whatever is driving the body's psychotic episodes.

It's interesting to note that whenever Noise seizes control of Colour firmly enough to start speaking through them, she only seems to have access to that Colour's memory. She might remember the actions, thoughts and feelings of other Colours, but only from the perspective of her current "host." I think this gives some slight credibility to the idea I suggested above, but of course, I have no way of really confirming that.

Noise herself doesn't seem to care very much about her own nature; she sees herself as being there to do a job, and more introspective topics don't seem to interest her very much. This might change depending on what Colour she is "possessing," but it seems like a fairly constant feature of her personality.

That conversation I referenced earlier, in which Noise talked for so long that she began to feel more "real" was probably the closest she's come to truly thinking deeply about her own existence, and later references to that talk suggest that the emotions Noise most associates with it are loneliness, powerlessness and fear of the unknown. Whatever her real nature is, she seems almost afraid of becoming too person-like, and I'm not completely convinced that it's purely because she fears not being able to fulfil her self-proclaimed "caretaker" role.

Interestingly, Noise once speculated that she is the original Cyndi, with everything superfluous and unnecessary stripped away. I didn't believe this for a single second, but I definitely thought it was curious that she suggested it, since she usually seems uncomfortable with the idea of becoming too "real." It also says a lot about what Noise considers "necessary" in life, or to be a functioning person.

It's possible, of course, that even this attitude could be subject to change.

2.5.8: Possible Means of Dealing With Her

Figuring out what to do about Noise depends, I think, on having a better understanding of what she really is. While my earlier efforts were focused on thinking of ways to destroy or eliminate her, lately I've been thinking that it might be possible to work around her, or even secure her cooperation in looking for alternative means of dealing with the Rot, which, after all, seems to be the overwhelming driving force behind Cyndi's continuing addiction to cutting.

So far, I've managed to brainstorm the following means of lessening her influence, or stopping her from perpetuating the addiction altogether.

• Medication: It might be possible to cause her influence to fade using different anti-psychotics, or by upping the dosage of what Cyndi is currently taking. I do not think this is a good idea. Based purely on my uneducated hunch, I think Cyndi is extremely over-medicated already, and I don't think playing around with this cocktail further will solve the problem.

• Reason: It doesn't seem like Red Noise is completely immune to reason. While she might have a very cynical take on whether there are other options to mitigate the feeling of the Rot, it might be possible to get her to voluntarily stop pushing the habit.

• Colourification: Encouraging Noise to develop into an Apparently Normal Part, like the other Colours. Noise predicts that this would remove her ability to puppeteer and control guide the other Colours, but even if she were to bow out gracefully, I don't believe that this would entirely remove the addiction, meaning that Noise has marginally less reason to oppose the change than she might believe. However, I also acknowledge that "promoting" Red Noise to an Apparently Normal Part could come with its own risks, not the least of which is that Noise could be briar-patching, pretending to desire remaining as she is, when helping her become a Colour could actually make her even more powerful.

• Cooperating to Eliminate the Rot: Ultimately, Palette's self-harm is a means to an end; whatever reasons they might have had to begin the habit, their primary reason now seems to be as a means of controlling the constant, and ever-worsening psychosomatic pain that is The Rot. If myself, Palette's friends, and mental health professionals can find ways of reliably controlling the Rot, even if they are less effective than cutting, it might be enough to get Noise to try, once again, other means of helping them be happy - genuinely happy, as opposed to simply high from self-harm. This is easily the most ideal situation, in my opinion. Red Noise seems to have some very unique properties that separate her from the other Colours, and I have the hunch that she could actually be extremely helpful, if she ever wanted to cooperate with us, or Cyndi's therapists, of her own free will (perhaps, for want of a better term).

2.5.9: Related Phenomena

2.5.9.1: Psychotic Episodes

During our earlier conversations, Violet described the psychotic episodes the body sometimes suffers in great detail. I say "the body," because they don't seem to be isolated to any specific Colour, and while the System's DID persists after taking anti-psychotic medication, the hallucinations do not, so it's a pretty safe conclusion that they're a "hardware problem."

So far, I haven't actually explored the phenomena very much in conversation, but over the months that I've known them, I have witnessed a few variants of these episodes, and I'll try to relay what I know here.

• The first symptom is a change in their visual perception; everything becomes either a shade of red or black. People around her become mutilated in appearance; their skin may appear torn, they may have missing limbs, or they may be covered in blood.
• The roar of acoustic red noise (not the personality) may manifest as an auditory hallucination, sometimes completely drowning out any other sounds around them.
• One particularly striking incident happened during a group therapy session; Chocolate (then going by the name Xiketic) sent me a photo of some of her paperwork, which was covered in strange "glyphs." She claimed that the page had been covered in red glyphs, so she drew over them in black, but nobody else on the server could detect any signs of red underneath the pen marks. When she sent photograph of a fresh, blank form, which she claimed had "not as many" red glyphs, nobody on the server could see them.

Hallucinated glyphs

• I don't know if this always happens, but it's apparently not uncommon for the taste of food and drink to change. No matter what they ingest, all food suddenly tastes salty, metallic, or in some way blood-like.
• Hallucinatory episodes are also accompanied by Shadows (Dandy refers to them as "Monsters.") They are perceived as dark, amorphous masses sitting around the environment, with white eyes, and sometimes (though not always) possessing teeth. They don't seem to do anything other than emit rapid, unintelligible whispers when the body gets close to them. As the psychotic episodes worsen, the effective radius of their whispers increases, until the body doesn't need to be anywhere near one in order to hear the whispers. The shadows generally don't move, and coming into contact with them produces a shock of painful, sudden cold, as though that part of the body was dunked in ice water. The reason the System knows this is because of her father (see below).
• Judging by one recent episode which occurred when Violet was out for a walk (experiencing Noise very loudly), the Shadows also appear in photographs, and on camera screens. For a moment, I thought that during a psychotic episode, Cyndi might be able to navigate the world by looking at her phone's camera output, but it seems like she'd perceive the same Shadows, in the same places, whether she was looking at the screen or at the real world.
• The is one Shadow that shows different behaviour. Unlike the others, it's capable of coherent speech, and will follow the body around rather than staying in place. It claims to be the "creator" of the twisted reality that the body perceives during episodes, and goes by the name "Mint Leaf," - a name which is also used to refer to the distorted reality.
• Mint Leaf describes the twisted reality perceived during these episodes as a "degree," seeming to imply that the world has been twisted through some higher spatial dimension to produce these nightmarish visions.
• It will sometimes tell whichever Colour is fronting to do random things, which are occasionally, but not exclusively, destructive, like rolling themselves down a hill, throwing a stone from one place to another, or stabbing a pillow.

Since both Mint Leaf and Red Noise seem to be the same kind of "entity", I thought once that it might be possible that the two are aware of each others' "existence," and that they might subjectively perceive themselves as being related to one another, since they both appear to be products of the body's psychotic episodes. For the moment, it doesn't appear that they "know" each other, but I haven't really explored this in detail, and have never spoken with Mint Leaf, directly or indirectly, so I'm unable to verify things from its "perspective."

2.5.9.2: The Rot

During one of the longest Noise-attacks Dandy has endured (to my knowledge, she described a feeling which she summarised as being akin to her insides rotting away. While resisting the desire to cut, she whimpered that she "didn't want to be like this," that her insides felt rotten or dead, and that cutting is the only thing that can temporarily fix this sensation. She also mentioned that her heart hurt - that it felt as though it was being squeezed. I don't know whether this referred to her physical heart or if she was speaking more metaphorically, but since that conversation, I learned that this rotting feeling is universal among the Colours; they feel it all the time, to some extent or other, and cutting is the most effective way of making the feeling go away.

Violet Possibly Experiencing this Feeling of Rotting

It doesn't seem like the rotting feeling can be brought about on purpose, and it also doesn't seem like it can be controlled with anti-psychotic medication, but both these things merit further investigation. It also doesn't look like anything else alleviates this feeling other than self-harm.

According to Dandy, the feeling of rotting did not exist before Ashley got the other Colours addicted to cutting - at least she doesn't think that it did, but she doesn't seem to be able to remember clearly. This is suggestive of the idea that the rotting feeling is at least partially a symptom of self-harm withdrawal, and that if Cyndi can stay clean for long enough, the feeling will eventually lessen, or disappear completely. It's also possible that this sensation could be a leftover manifestation of narcissistic abuse suffered throughout childhood (a possibility that occurred to me after watching videos on the topic by Ross Rosenberg), but of course, I can't say so definitively - it's just a hunch. Perhaps it is Cotard's Syndrome, since that condition is apparently co-morbid with dissociative disorders and psychosis. The feeling could also be something created by Noise, to convince the System that it needs to keep cutting, or it could even be a symptom of a physical illness that's gone undiagnosed.

During that first conversation with Dandy, I was briefly reminded of Cotard's Delusion (in which a patient describes themselves as feeling dead or rotting) as she spoke, but quickly dismissed any connection, because the symptoms didn't seem as severe as Cotards's Delusion is usually described.

Apparently though, Cotards' can be co-morbid with other dissociative disorders so there may be more of a link there than I thought.

Even though it's not likely to actually be Cotard's, I think that investigating the Rot, from as many angles as possible (including the possibility that there may be a physical problem with Cyndi's body that has gone hitherto unexplored) is, in my opinion, of paramount importance. The Rot seems to be the central pillar on which the addiction to self-harm rests, and even though some residual addiction may remain afterwards, if the Rot were to be eliminated, I think the addiction would disappear not long afterwards (or at least, the very long clean streaks necessary to break the addiction would become much more bearable).

2.5.10: Post-Vive Developments

For reasons I can only speculate about, Red Noise started getting far more strategic and aggressive shortly before Cyndi's admission to Vive. This was especially noticeable during an alarming incident that happened not long after Ashley discovered that she actually could play the guitar. (I speculated about whether she could have inherited the skill from Rose, and that seems to have been the case).

Very soon after Ashley discovered this ability, there was a notably intense attack by Noise, who caused Ashley to make several very deep cuts on both forearms.

My first speculation was that Noise might have targeted Cyndi's arms on purpose, as a way of trying to reduce Cyndi's manual dexterity, and directly attack Ashley's new-found source of self-expression and enjoyment. If that was what she was trying to do, it was unsuccessful - Ashley could still play afterwards, but that didn't rule out Noise experiencing something like jealousy, trying to make sure that she remained the System's only source of happiness and comfort from the stresses of life, and the pain of the Rot.

Turquoise was skeptical that Noise was trying to attack Cyndi's other emotional outlets, and Noise herself didn't elaborate on why she chose the arms over the thighs in this instance - only that she'd been targeting Cyndi's thighs plenty lately, and she felt as though the arms "needed some love."

It all makes me wonder about whether Noise is enough of a personality to possess some kind of subconscious of her own - if she might occasionally act on motivations that she's not entirely aware of.

Much more recent developments have convinced me that it could be a good idea to actively engage with Noise and talk, in as much depth as possible, about her own thinking and motivations. It's possible that she could at least be made to see any contradictions in her own thinking, which could lead to it being easier to secure her cooperation. Of course, since her memories seem to be tied to whichever Colour she is speaking through, it's probable that she might actually forget past conversations and decisions, and need to be reminded a few times before the resolution "sticks."

4: Notes on Family History and Potential Sources of Trauma

Before I even became aware of Palette's DID, my first few conversations with "Cyndi" made reference to the relationship they had with their parents. To say that this relationship didn't strike me as healthy or supportive is an understatement. Her father, in particular, struck me as callous, uncaring, controlling and manipulative, and the more I've learned about him and his behaviour, the more it seems like Cyndi has been going through at least some level of narcissistic abuse for many years now. Subsequent conversations have revealed that while her mother does admit that her Cyndi's father can go too far sometimes, she almost never actually intervenes on Cyndi's behalf. In fact, from Palette's descriptions, she seems so egregiously conflict-avoidant that she would rather something unfair happen to Cyndi (and apologise on her father's behalf later) than actually disagree with her father, or oppose his decisions or behaviour.

In the interests of fairness, Palette has described a single exception to this rule; when she came out as trans, her father was apparently prepared to reject this as nothing but attention-seeking. Her mother was the one who convinced Cyndi's father to accept her transition.

It didn't surprise me when I learned that one of the preconditions for developing dissociative disorders is an unstable or uncertain relationship between children and the people who are supposed to act as their caregivers. I don't know if the treatment they have received while growing up is sufficient for disorganised attachment, but his behaviour doesn't seem restricted to Palette - it seems that all her siblings are subjected to similar upbringings (just to a lesser extent), and at least one (the youngest sister) seems to have developed her own psychologically unhealthy coping mechanisms.

I haven't dug extensively into Cyndi's past during our conversations - it's possible that even some of the Colours may not remember many details - but the idea that her childhood was filled with traumatic incidents and an unhealthy relationship with her parents doesn't seem far-fetched to me, given what has been revealed about their behaviour.

The list I've presented below isn't exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, but I recommend asking the System about at least some of these incidents, in case I've mis-remembered something, or drawn an incorrect conclusion.

• There have been numerous references since I first met her, to an incident when Cyndi was slammed into a wall by her neck and held there by her father. I believe his reason for doing this was because Cyndi wasn't doing her chores correctly or fast enough. I don't remember when this incident took place, but it definitely seems to be something important to ask about, if it hasn't been discussed to death already. Whitney believed the incident had been mentioned in the Vive application form, but it's been recently revealed to me that while her mother did verbally acknowledge the incident, she deliberately avoided writing it down, stating that her reasoning for doing so was just in case the Vive staff sent police to take Cyndi and her siblings away.
• They vaguely remembers a time that he slapped Cyndi on the back, leaving a large welt, when she was really little. None of the Colours seem to remember why.
• They recall, a little more distinctly, a time when he punched her in the shoulder, bruising it for a week, because she "wasn't listening to him" (she had earbuds in at the time, and wasn't aware he had spoken).
• He has pinned her to the bed using her comforter because she wouldn't go to sleep.
• He has also been known to dismiss or disbelieve Cyndi's mental health concerns repeatedly, and even appears to treat physical health problems with as sort of "ignore it until it goes away" kind of mentality. Signs of distress, anxiety or pain tend to either go ignored, or punished. He casually dismisses Cyndi's psychotic hallucinations because "they're not real," and therefore it's ridiculous to be affected by them.
• He seems to believe that acknowledging any kind of pain, physical or psychological, is just encouraging Cyndi to fake more of it.
• I remember two Colours describing an incident in which Cyndi was trying to move around a Shadow (see above) that had manifested nearby. Her father physically forced her through it, ignored the pain sensations this produced, and then began scolding her, because he insisted that she knew it wasn't real, and she was "just trying to be problematic."
• Whitney related a story to me about when Cyndi was a newborn, and her father fed her ice cream. Even though her mother had heard that babies under 12 months are not supposed to be given ice cream, she did absolutely nothing to stop her father, and he continued doing it. This was apparently not an isolated incident either; as I was polishing up an earlier version of this Manual, Whitney decided to ask her father about the incident, and he responded as if it had been something he did many more times than just once. When asked more specifically whether he once fed her ice cream as a newborn, despite knowing she wasn't meant to have it, her father laughed and responded, "That sounds like something I'd do!"
• He has woken her up by pouring ice down the back of her shirt. I don't know what prompted this, but given the rest of this list, it wouldn't be out of the question to think that it was done purely out of impatience.
• He frequently assumes the most uncharitable motivations possible whenever she needs to stay home from work or school, being very quick to call her lazy and unmotivated. He seems to frequently assume that when Cyndi is phyiscally ill, like when she has a cold or the flu, that she's faking her symptoms or getting sick on purpose, to dodge responsibilities. He seems to frequently assume the same thing of other people as well.
• He generally tends to punish emotional openness, and most of the Colours have learned to simply never seek his help when they are in distress.
• He apparently has a tracking device on her car. After installing it, he lied about doing so, by saying, he has "no idea where [she] goes when [she] drive[s] off," and later, when confronted about it, he admitted to having installed it, but replied with, "If you had just been more responsible, then we wouldn't have had to do that." (Or in other words, "Look what you made me do!")
• Cyndi suspects that her former therapist Ecko would tell him about things she said during their sessions, without her knowledge or consent. There is no way to prove this, as of yet, but there have been incidents during which her parents just mysteriously know things that they shouldn't have been able to discover any other way. Her father seemed to insist that Ecko told him nothing, but given the incident with the tracking device, it wouldn't be the first time he'd given such a suspiciously specific denial. It also happened fairly consistently; their parents would have quick, ten-minute talks after her sessions, and every time she related something "potentially troubling" to Ecko, her parents suddenly know about it, even if Cyndi asked Ecko to keep this information between them. It's implied that this is the reason her parents chose that specialist in the first place, but of course, Palette has no way of knowing this. Her father's stated reason is that Ecko is supposed to be a specialist in treating self-harm. However, she usually didn't address or mention that problem at all during sessions.
• Her father goes through her mail, and is apparently able to read the messages on her phone at any time. This is perhaps the only justifiable intrusion on her privacy, since he can easily claim he's doing it to prevent Palette from buying knives and razors online.
• He has openly admitted to emotionally manipulating her, during an argument about getting her to do her homework. He defended emotional manipulation as a tactic to get people to do "what's important," and couldn't understand her objections. (This conversation happened before I was aware of the Palette system, but I'm quite sure, from the writing style, that it was either Rojo or Blake that was complaining about him.)
• When the end of the school year approached, her father pushed her to study to the point where she was physically sick. She had to stop taking her anti-psychotics because they made her sleepy, suffered through six days of constant horrific visions, sensations of painful icy cold, constant auditory hallucinations, food and drink that tasted of blood, metal or salt, and any time not spent working was spent either vomiting or crying. At the end of this period, when she was finally able to take some anti-psychotics and fall asleep for 16 hours, she was scolded by her father for sleeping in, and then subjected to further rages from him because she'd "ruined her GPA." He then accused her of not trying harder because "You don't love us enough."
• Particularly aggravating, as a friend of hers, is the fact that her father seems to have some fantasy that Cyndi just uses the Internet to look for symptoms, and then fakes her mental health problems, either for attention, to further some kind of agenda, out of pure laziness, or because she has some quasi-romantic fantasy of being some "the mad girl" in an asylum, as though being locked up was something which would make her seem cool and interesting. He apparently refused to let her attend any program like Vive for some time, because he thinks that sending her to such a program would be caving in and supporting this fantasy. It should go without saying that after attending the program, Palette's actual fears were that people they knew at school would find out that she'd gone there, causing more rumours about her to spread.
• He also seemed to believe, for a long time, that the only reason she self-harmed through cutting is because she discovered that there were other people out there who got attention for it, and she wanted to imitate them.
• He has justified his belief that she's just attention-seeking by stating, "Every month, you just make up some new mental problem." Even if this was the case, then I think it would show such a chronic deficit of attention that it would still be worth looking into, but having actually interacted with her since April, I think her faking her disorder is extremely unlikely, to say the least.

Unpleasant Memories Resurfacing

• I also learned, quite recently (post-Vive) that physical touch was an extreme rarity within Cyndi's family. Her parents apparently almost never show her physical affection, and from the looks of things, neither do her siblings, because they were just brought up that way. For a while, I suspected that this was the case ever since Cyndi was born, but one of the Colours contradicted this during a recent conversation, stating that she did receive physical affection during her younger years - her parents eventually stopped when they started to find her physical neediness "annoying."
• I am a little bit familiar with how important physical touch is to a child's development (Harlow's experiments with monkeys come to mind), which makes me suspect that this lack of affection is really significant both when it comes to her DID, development of a healthy attitude towards themselves, perhaps even their self-harm addiction.
• It might even be the case that this touch-starvation is why Red Noise seems to manifest as a hug, albeit of disembodied Television static.

One of my first conversations with Cyndi (before I knew about the Palette system) was about whether or not her complaints about her family were justified, or whether they were an example of Cyndi "just being an angsty teen." She was describing how every time she tried to tell her dad that he was hurting her, he would invariably shut her down, and tell her that it was her own fault. Objections were instantly countered with examples of when she's proved his point correct, and she was always left unable to fight back or state her own case. She asked me whether it was possible that she was just being an "angsty teen" and overreacting to everything her parents did.

Personally, I think even if the System was being an angsty teen, this behaviour still goes beyond the bounds of what would be considered "normal" for a supportive family, or even a relatively strict one, and I told her as much during this conversation. I don't think it would be out of the question for a lot of her psychological problems, including perhaps, her dissociative tendencies themselves, to stem from his treatment of her, his dismissal of her needs and wants, or the fact that her mother doesn't really seem to do anything to defend her, other than apologising for him after the fact ("I'm sorry dad does that" being an especially memorable quote).

What's more concerning is the way some of the Colours defend and excuse his actions. Dandy, in particular, seems to be completely incapable of finding fault with anyone, and would rather insult herself than even consider thinking badly of anyone else. (She has actually defended him by suggesting that he's just "had a bad day," as though that was enough reason to justify taking out his anger and frustrations on a member of his family). During one conversation, Dandy asked me, in a surprised tone, if this behaviour was actually not considered normal. She further defends him by pointing out how hard their father works, and how he occasionally does kind things for Cyndi as well - sometimes surprisingly so.

These conversations usually caused me to spend some time staring at a wall.

I don't really know if it would be possible to actually change her father's attitudes or behaviour through persuasion. I don't know if therapy would help him to regulate his emotions and deal with his anger and possible narcissistic traits. According to Violet, he has said that he would rather go to war than go to therapy, so the possibility seems to have at least been discussed at some point.

Of course, it would be ideal if he could learn how to support her emotionally, or at the very least, learn what behaviours of his cause the most harm so that he can stop doing them. But in order for him to choose to do this, he would need to be convinced that his actions thus far have actually been harmful, and I'm not sure his able to be convinced of this; just about every conversation I've had with the System has suggested that he's extremely reluctant to ever admit wrongdoing under any circumstance, and once again, he is very dismissive of most of Palette's claimed mental health problems.

It's possible the recommendations and guidance of an actual professional could sway his thinking ... but I'm not holding my breath. For the moment, it seems like we might end up having to work around him rather than being able to secure his cooperation.

5: Notes Regarding Personal Relationships

Through no apparent fault of their own, the Palette system has had a history of pretty unreliable interpersonal relationships. While a lot of it could be boiled down to ordinary teenage drama, they have been more socially isolated than what would be considered "normal" these past couple of years. She tends to get along far better with her teachers than the other students and has had trouble holding onto friendships her own age.

They have jokingly referred to a "curse" that has operated pretty consistently since eighth grade; every six months, Palette loses all of her friends, which has forced her to get better at making new ones, but which is still demoralising, and does nothing to help their collective paranoia, or their opinions about themselves. They seem extremely reluctant to tell anyone about their DID, even people with whom they intend on entering romantic relationships with, thinking that it would drive them away.

A lot of this can probably be traced back to the rumours surrounding her at school. She has a reputation that Dandy has described as "beastly," which can probably be traced back to an incident with a person she called "Milo." Palette either didn't describe, or I can't remember, exactly what was said, but they said something that made Milo feel unsafe. They told their parents, the parents told the school board, and Cyndi was promptly suspended until she could produce a medical certificate stating that she wouldn't be a danger to the rest of the school.

There was also an incident in which another friend, who will be referred to as "Apollo", betrayed her trust and "exposed" her self-harm, not only to the school counsellor, but also to the rest of the student body, resulting in even more rumours and gossip, and the almost complete loss of Palette's entire social circle. A number of the people in which the System confided ended up actively shunning her, and while she's been able to keep in touch with some friends online, she seems to have almost nobody offline, in who she can actually confide.

In fact, it seems as though any new friendships that Cyndi tries to form have a tendency to be tainted by memories of previous relationships that have gone wrong somehow, leaving almost every single Colour in the system with an extensive list of trust and self-worth issues that, in my opinion, need to be addressed quickly, so they don't impede progress in other areas of therapy.

Palette's List of Trust and Self Worth Problems

It seems like in recent months, Palette has begun forming more stable friendships online, who know about their DID and cutting problem, and very recently, they have also added two long-time friends, Rachel and Marz, to the Palette Testing Server. As of this writing, I haven't interacted with either of them, but I'm hoping that Palette's slowly regrowing social network will continue being a strong positive influence on them.

At some point, I will probably begin recommending that Palette try to explain about their DID to as many people as possible. It's likely that not many will understand or believe them, but at least this will open up the opportunity for some level of understanding to take place.

6: Other Major Concerns

6.1: Self-Loathing

The majority of this section used to revolve mostly around a few conversations I'd had with Dandy, but I've learned a lot from Ashley and Lavender recently which I think merits inclusion here.

I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that trying to resolve this self-loathing is not only very important, but could potentially be the most important therapeutic goal that any of the Colours could set for themselves. Not just because the self-loathing causes some Colours to be reluctant to seek help, but because I think on some level, the absolutely ridiculous levels of contempt and disgust some of the Colours have for themselves could actually be, either in whole or in part, the source of the Rot.

There were hints about their self-worth issues even before I knew about Palette's DID. The screenshots I've included earlier (describing her father's treatment of her) show what appears to be the re-emergence of suppressed or forgotten memories. Judging from the writing style and the emotes being used, Dandy was the one in control there, and even as she began to recall those memories, she continued trying to defend her father anyway, as though the mere *possibility of him being abusive was something painful or uncomfortable to think about.

The second important conversation I had with Dandy was one which we had shortly before her admission to Vive. As we talked, a picture quickly developed of a girl who was so egregiously high in Trait Agreeableness and so utterly lacking in self-worth that she would never even consider thinking badly about anybody else, even if they seemed to be clearly in the wrong; she would instantly resort to attacking, insulting and berating herself rather than view anybody else in a negative light, and didn't seem to consider this a problem, because "she deserves it.". While there had been hints since April, this conversation was especially troubling because of the sheer difficulty involved in getting Dandy to even consider the possibility that she might not be a monster.

A brief summary of the key takeaways from the conversation is:

• Dandy seems to think that she's a bad person (or not even a person, but a monster) because of the fact that she craves self-harm, and the taste of her own blood. She doesn't seem to accept the objection that the stereotypical "monster" is a danger to other people, not themselves.
• She seems to believe that she deserves any and all bad things that happen to her.
• Quite a few things that happen don't even register as bad in the first place. For example, her treatment by her family, and the fact that she's socially shunned because of the rumours that exist about her at school.
• I think it's faintly possible that a lot of her nervous tics and mannerisms could stem from the fact that she has repressed a lot of these experiences, and doesn't allow herself to feel emotions appropriate to the things that have happened to her (or, doesn't realise that she should be feeling those emotions).
• There may be some faint ties to her family's Mormon past (the idea of original sin could play a role, as well as that of divinely delivered punishment, even though Palette appears to be an atheist now), her strict upbringing by her father, and the fact that her emotional needs seem to have gone largely, but not completely unrecognised by either parent. Given my lack of formal training, it's probably best to treat these links as simple guesswork, but I still think they could be worth exploring.

During the conversation, I tried to briefly explain the idea that being a good person might mean having the ability to be dangerous, and coupling this with self-restraint, and that this was different from being harmless. I'm fairly sure I rushed that explanation though, because Dandy didn't seem to understand it, and I regret not being able to talk about it more, since I think it's an important lesson for her to learn. Her stay at Vive did absolutely nothing to help correct this warped self-perception, and might have, in fact, made it worse. I think it could be an extremely important focus for future therapeutic work, but anybody trying to help her with it will have to take into account her mental age, and be prepared to explain concepts in a very simple way.

Later conversations suggest that Dandy "deserving" bad things extends to even very extreme (almost ridiculous) hypothetical scenarios. If she were walking down the street to buy pretzels, for instance, and she was attacked from behind for no reason, beaten and robbed, it seems that Dandy would still try to justify the actions of the person that assaulted her.

Hypothetical Robbery

In another conversation the following week, Dandy suggested that she was such a terrible person that she didn't even deserve to die, seemingly because her death would mean a release from her suffering. Instead, Dandy insists that she "deserves" to suffer and be miserable forever. In other words, she seems to believe that she literally deserves to be cast into the Christian hell for all eternity.

Dandy Apparently Deserving Hell

(I find it interesting that she phrased it, "My thoughts tell me," instead of "I think." It might indicate that I've been having a bit of a positive effect on her, and that what I've tried to teach her about distancing herself from these thoughts has actually been working. Then again, I can't really be sure about that. I will definitely have to explore this further, and I don't think I should be the only one doing so).

Violet (now Lavender) and Whitney also seem to be extremely forgiving towards people who do Palette wrong, though these two are less extreme than Dandy. Rojo is on the other end of the spectrum, being very hesitant to forgive wrongdoing, and often standing up against any perceived injustice towards the System (in particular, anyone reading this document might want to ask her about the individual known as Apollo, and the number of chances he was given to prove himself a worthwhile friend. Be prepared for a rant if Rojo or Blake are the ones fronting).

Their own value as people seems to be one of the most important things the System as a whole could learn during therapeutic sessions, and even though I'm not any kind of professional, I intend to continue trying to encourage them to develop a more accurate view of themselves, and also trying to dismantle some of their more egregiously toxic self-beliefs.

I think some kind of assertiveness training would probably be useful, particularly focused on Lavender, Dandy and possibly Whitney, as well as trying to teach Palette to distance themselves from the kinds of self-loathing negative thoughts that I've given examples of above. For example, rather than thinking, "I deserve bad things happening to me," I've encouraged her to start saying, "I think I deserve it when bad things happen to me" to create some distance between her feelings and reality.

7: Noticeable Improvements

I can't say for certain whether these results have been entirely due to speaking with me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there are a number of factors involved in each one, and I'm nearly certain that I can't claim full credit for any one of them. However, I've been able to give the System the following nudges towards what I think are healthier mental attitudes and habits:

• Dandy and Ashley get along much better now than they used to. I definitely can't claim full credit for this, since I'm essentially just building on what Gabe already started, but I think I've convinced the rest of the Colours to stop treating Grey like an outcast, and try to integrate her more into the System's mental landscape.
• Ashley still doesn't get "let out" very often, but I think she's still allowed more time to front than she used to be. She's permitted to express herself more, and the other Colours are more forgiving towards her in the case of relapses.
• Ashley has discovered (or rediscovered) not only her ability to play an instrument, but the fact that she has near perfect pitch. For a while, she became quite engrossed with her newfound ability, and I intend to promote and encourage this as much as possible, since (as I'm sure I've stated above) the more things she has in her life which she can find fulfilling, the less reason she'll have to cut.
• Ashley seems to have begun fighting Noise even more vigorously, and is reporting instances when she, or the other Colours give into her whispers with less glee, and more regret and worry.
• Her parents actually noticed an overall improvement in her mental well-being since I began talking to her. This is definitely due to a number of factors, but while her parents credited her therapist (they still don't really know that I exist), Palette says that I've had a much greater positive effect on her self-harm, and her overall mental health than he has.
• I've helped Palette deal with a number of attacks (I've lost track of how many) on a case-by-case basis, sitting with whichever Colour is fronting, sometimes for hours at a time, convincing them to discard whatever instrument they intend to use for cutting. Sometimes this has taken the form of dropping a knife, and at others, it's involved discarding a packet of razor blades, one blade at a time.
• I think I'm slowly starting to give Dandy a better sense of her own worth. I'm going to make it a focus of future conversations that the people in her life who criticise her are not necessarily correct, and I'm probably going to devote some time to exploring the difference between a good person and a bad one, so that Dandy can realise that she doesn't fall into the latter category.
• It's possible that I might also be slowly making progress with Dandy by drawing parallels between her, and the life of a character in the game Fire Emblem, who goes by Marianne. Dandy has broken down crying over voice chat, talking about this character, and how sorry she's felt for her. Since that conversation, she's continued to post screenshots and short recorded clips of her play sessions, and I always point out the way that Marianne treats herself unfairly, and how closely this parallels Dandy's own thoughts and behaviour. These conversations probably don't have a great effect on her individually, but I hope that they will eventually accumulate in her memory sufficiently to change the trajectory of her self-perception.

Once again, I can't possibly claim full credit for any of these; a number of the most obvious improvements took place during Palette's summer break, and it's likely that the lack of schoolwork was a large factor in her self-harm being slightly easier to manage. I would like to keep building on these in the future though, and any professional advice or support would be greatly appreciated.

8: Open Questions and Speculation

8.1: DID and the Jungian Shadow

More of a philosophical question. Obviously, there are going to be a number of professionals who dismiss Carl Jung's work as worthless quackery, but assuming the concept of the Shadow has any validity, I've often wondered whether each Colour would have their own Shadow, or whether it would be something shared by all of them.

Thinking about the Jungian Shadow also forces me to consider Ashley. It's possible that I might have completely misunderstood what a Shadow is, but my current thinking is that Ashley could have been the Shadow part of Rose's personality, designed to contain all the things that the more dominant part found repulsive or creepy. That part, which still seems to partly identify with being Rose, then became Dandy. By casting Ashley away though, Dandy seems to have lost a great deal of maturity, as well as the ability to understand more complex nuance, and she has only started recovering those things in the last few months, very, very slowly.

(As with all my other conclusions, I could be completely wrong about this; it seems like Ashley can understand a lot more complexity and nuance than Dandy, but I haven't pushed Ashley to find out just how much she can handle, or actually compared the two of them directly, and these tests suddenly strike me as potentially being important.)

I wonder whether there is any research available on how the concept of the Shadow relates to people with DID or other dissociative disorders, and if performing Shadow-work on Dandy, or the rest of the System could help in dismantling the addiction to self-harm.

8.2: The Trope Filled Nature of the Colours

The question of where the personality traits of a lot of the Colours come from.

I've noticed that a lot of their more minor quirks and tics seem to have been pulled directly from Japanese anime, or the Western fandom culture surrounding it. This got me curious about where the personality traits of each Colour come from, and how likely they are to have been pulled from fictitious sources. After all, I imagine the brain has to have had some basis for giving each Colour their individual traits, so these kinds of sources shouldn't be ruled out.

I'm not saying that any of Palette's alters are actually fictives, but more that their traits have some potentially strong parallels with the kinds of media they consumed before The Split.

I also wonder whether these traits, and their associated stereotypes, are the brain's unconscious way of trying to communicate something about Cyndi's potential traumas. I'm especially curious about how this applies to Red Noise. She seems to have been "coded" as a villain. Her speech patterns, the way Violet draws her, the way she laughs, and how insufferably smug she can be all point towards the idea that she was created as an extremely stereotypical "bad guy," which makes me wonder if this was Cyndi's brain's last-ditch attempt at signalling the addiction was something to be fought rather than welcomed.

This ties into the following speculation.

8.3: Prism, and the Possibility of Unconscious Roleplay?

Some time ago, I noticed that a new Proxy had been created in secret within the Discord server that I use to communicate with Palette. It seems to have been given the name "Prism," and its profile picture looks to be a sketch of a unique face, unused by any of the other Colours, glitched so that it's split into magenta, yellow and blue, evoking several Colours merged into a single entity.

I haven't interacted with this "Prism" outside of a single, very brief conversation. What's interesting are the incidents which happened around that conversation, and the potential questions they raised.

The event happened during a conversation with Red Noise. I quickly cut her off as she began messaging me, and told her that I was quite certain another online acquaintance I knew had actually managed to kill themselves. Red Noise's usual demeanour instantly disappeared, and seemed to quickly be replaced by a very different entity, who showed sudden and extremely unexpected concern for my well-being, and insisted on asking whether I, and my acquaintance, were okay.

First, and so far, only interaction with Prism

(I have a folder with the complete conversation in screenshot form which I can send on request)

Blake, who I rarely speak with, shortly fronted, complaining of a splitting headache; it seems that Noise forced her awake and latched onto her in order to continue communicating. When I told Blake to scroll up, she made two interesting observations. She didn't recognise the proxy, suggesting that it had been created with as few Colours co-conscious as possible. She also noted that she could see bits of everyone's writing style in the few sentences Prism spoke. Immediately afterwards, I commented on the fact that it felt, for the first time, as though I was actually talking with a complete and integrated Cyndi, as opposed to the individual Colours, or the persona of Cyndi that Palette normally wears for everyday social interaction.

It was later revealed that Red Noise made Ashley create this Proxy just to mess with me, and while she later describes the incident as "fun," I actually don't know the extent to which she was lying about that. Even if I were to concede that the proxy was just created to mock or mess with me, it still seems like something more than that was happening during that conversation.

Later, as I thought back on this conversation, it occurred to me that what had just happened felt a lot like being in a complex, single-player Alternate Reality Game, and I began wondering whether Cyndi's brain, at some level of awareness much lower than the individual Colours, was actually weaving some sort of deliberate narrative, for some reason or other. I didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that Cyndi was faking her DID; I think that judging from my interactions with her since April, it would be far too much trouble to keep everything consistent if she were merely faking the disorder for attention (surely, there would be easier ways to get attention if that's what "Cyndi" wanted).

I did, however, start wondering whether it might be possible that Cyndi's brain created the Palette System and all its constituent Colours, not merely as a kind of defense mechanism, but as a puzzle, which might actually provide clues to helping the System process their past traumas by solving it. A puzzle which none of the Colours are aware of, except in the most vague and hazy way. If that is the case, then engaging with this "narrative" could be the best way to start trying to process the experiences and emotions that led to her DID in the first place.

Of course, the feeling of a "narrative" could just be because Red Noise was deliberately weaving a story in order to make me think I was having a positive effect, or that there might be hope of re-integration, when nothing like this was actually happening.

8.4: Something Other Than DID?

Information has recently come to light that has caused me to start considering the possibility that the diagnosis of DID might be slightly inaccurate in some way; it seems as though Cyndi's case is somewhat unusual for DID, and this might be the reason behind the dismissal of her condition by at least some of the professionals who have looked at her case so far.

While she does seem to meet all the DSM5 criteria (aside from the one about the dissociation causing significant distress and dysfunction), the Palette system appears to lack an "original" identity, seeming to be a system of alters with no "core."

Some of the sources I've been looking at (many of them written by individuals experiencing, or claiming to experience DID themselves) suggest that the "core" or "original" personality should not be confused with the Host (the personality who is most often in control of the body), and that the two are different concepts. I'll have to look more into this, but it seems (as far as I know) that the Core and the Host, while different concepts, are usually the same personality. I've done my best to treat them as separate concepts while coming up with the possibilities below, but the list is still something I'm refining.

To recap: there doesn't seem to be an active "core" personality, and the System is unsure who the "host" (the most active alter) is either.

Finally, there's the concept of alters fusing together, or undergoing further division into new identities; according to the staff at Vive, this just "doesn't happen," and I've not (yet) found any reference to this phenomenon in any medical literature, though other individuals claiming to have been formally diagnosed with DID describe similar phenomena.

These unusual features suggest a few possibilities, which I've outlined below in no particular order. The list is not exhaustive; I'm sure there are other possible scenarios I simply haven't thought of yet, but they're the only ones I've been able to come up with so far:

• 1. Cyndi's Faking: There is no dissociation at all, and the Palette system is an elaborate roleplaying scenario created by Cindi either for attention, or as a manifestation of a different psychological disorder, like Munchausen Syndrome or pathologial lying. I think this is extremely unlikely, given the level of commitment to the scenario that would have to be maintained. There are far easier ways to get attention, if that's what Cyndi is after. She also doesn't seem to fit the criteria for these other possibilities.
• 2. DID Is Valid, Core Unknown: DID is the best description of what's happened to Cyndi, and one of the established Colours is the Core; they just have no idea who it is.
• 3. DID Is Valid, Core Not Required: There is no identity in the System which can meaningfully be called the Core, but not all Multiple systems require a Core, and DID is still the best description of what's going on. If this is true, it suggests that the current understanding of DID and Multiples in general is incomplete, which doesn't seem terribly unlikely, as it's an uncommon condition.
• 4. DID Is Valid, Core is a Dormant Alter: I thought of this scenario when I was still unclear on the distinction between a Core and a Host in a DID system. There nevertheless remains a possibility that there is an Alter or identity buried somewhere in Cyndi's brain which does not front regularly, who might not have fronted for years, or who has (somehow) escaped the notice of the rest of the System and exists in secret. This seems ... incredibly unlikely, since from the look of things, pretty much all the body's waking hours can be accounted for by some combination of Colours, but it might be that there is some dormant Colour who fronts only in extremely rare situations.
• 5. DID Is Valid, Noise Is the Core: She wishes This was a scenario proposed by Noise herself, and referenced earlier in the manual. I don't think it's likely at all, but Noise is an almost constant "presence" in Cyndi's mindscape, so I thought I should include it here for the sake of completeness, even though Noise comes across as a terribly incomplete personality.
• 4. Not Technically DID, But A Similar Condition: Cyndi was misdiagnosed and doesn't actually have DID, but is experiencing a related disorder/phenomeon that shares many features with it. I don't think this one is especially likely either, because I've looked at the other dissociative disorders listed in the DSM5, and none of them fit quite as well as DID does.
• 5. Not Technically DID, But an Undiscovered Condition: Similar to the above, this suggests that Cyndi might be suffering from something that hasn't been rigorously documented yet. If the various personal websites, blogs and Youtube channels I've perused are to be believed, then there exist many Systems of multiple identities around the world that don't have any identifiable Core, but since they're anecdotal, I obviously have to take these testimonies with a fairly large grain of salt.)

I do not believe that it's necessary to work out who the Core or Host are in order to control the self-harm problem, but it still might be possible to work out who the Core is (if there is one) via just getting to know them better. Perhaps a Host could be determined just by tracking who is fronting during what times. It also seems to be the case that it's actually possible to distinguish between a Core and an Alter by watching brain activity in an MRI machine, if we want to get high tech about this.

Again, I don't think this should take priority over the more critical theraputic goals, like investigating the Rotting but if one of the Colours is the Core, or if there is an identifiable Host, the information could still be useful to know.

9: Potential Sources of Future Support

Parents

• It would be an ideal situation if Palette their parents as a source of emotional support. They are, after all, the people financially responsible for Cyndi's well-being, as well as those she spends most time around other than teachers.
• I think the most likely candidate here is Cyndi's mother. While it's possible that her father could be convinced of the importance of taking Cyndi's mental health more seriously, reacting with attempts to understand rather than simply declaring his own interpretations correct, I think her mother is much more likely to at least attempt to see things from Cyndi's point of view.
• It's possible that her mother could use some serious assertiveness training, since from what Palette has described, she doesn't seem to be very good at standing up to Cyndi's father under most circumstances, either supporting his actions by default, or privately disagreeing, doing nothing in the moment and apologising afterwards.
• It may just be possible to convince her father, provided truly overwhelming evidence were shown to support every single idea that Cyndi, myself or you try to put forward. It's more likely that he will accept some, but not all of the concepts presented here, (for example, accepting the idea of Red Noise as a shorthand for the addiction, even if he dismisses the idea of the Colours as nonsense).
• Even if this is too much of a stretch, it might be a good goal to work towards if he could stop simply declaring that all her problems are made-up or cries for attention, since this seems like it's likely to be damaging her recovery and encouraging her to relapse.
• I think it would also be useful, for myself and some of her closest friends to have her parents on speed-dial, so to speak, so that I (or her friends) could simply send them a message whenever Noise was getting especially aggressive. That way, if I couldn't talk Palette out of cutting, and she was unable to fight Noise off on their own, her parents could physically intervene, first by being present, and telling her to drop the cutting tool, and then by trying to (gently) take it from her. This strategy of having them step in to prevent an attack would be an absolutely final resort (I say "final resort" because it seems to me like it would be important to develop the mental habits to fight the addiction with as little intervention as possible, given Palette's goals of achieving independence from her family and being able to live on her own).
• I think getting her parents on her side is one of the most crucial steps forward that could be taken, since up until this point, Palette has done everything possible to prevent her parents finding out about her self-harm episodes or urges, because she feared that being open and transparent would result in punishment, ridicule, mockery, dismissal or anger instead of help or support (Violet has explicitly stated that punishment is their response to most things) Any progress towards this goal would likely be am emotional relief for Palette, which could go some way towards breaking the habit apart at the foundations.

Other DID Communities

• It seems that Palette has joined other communities online related to both self-harm and DID.
• I'm not sure how much they have helped her; in fact I remember that one of the members of the self-harm related communities may have encouraged her to continue the habit, or insulted her in some other way (I could be entirely wrong about this).
• I don't think they should be completely discounted as potential sources of future support though, especially if any of the staff or other patients at Vive happen to know any good, supportive groups with active and strict moderators, and she follows a policy of not chatting privately with anyone she doesn't fully trust (in other words, conversations should happen in open chat).

Therapy

• This should go without saying, but specifically, a therapist or group thereof, who are willing to treat and work with Palette as though they actually were a System of distinct individuals, rather than an attention-seeking teen consciously playing pretend.
• I do think it's about time her parents were filled in to some degree, for the reasons I outlined above. And with licensed therapists presenting the information rather than myself or Cyndi, they're much less likely to just dismiss it on the grounds of "You're just a child," or "What do you do for a living again?"

Romantic Relationships

• Having recently gotten into a romantic relationship, it's obvious that this could be a potentially huge source of support, particularly during the early/honeymoon phase.
• Her family doesn't seem to realise the extent to which Bretta, their girlfriend, is having a positive effect, and is likely to try and keep them apart if they perceive she and Palette are spending too much time around each other.
• I think a little more time and energy needs to go into explaining the situation properly to Palette's parents, to prevent this from happening.

10: Open Questions and Final Thoughts

I'll mostly be devoting this section to any areas of investigation I think could be important focuses for future therapeutic work, or which I think deserve some extra consideration. Some of them will probably be mostly for my own curiosity, but if you don't think they're important, then they should be relatively easy to filter out.

There are also a couple of recommendations that I think could bring about positive changes in Cyndi's life, and I'll put them in their own section.

Questions:

• Is there any validity to the ida that Cyndi's brain could be trying to lead me through some kind of narrative, which could be key to processing some traumatic event(s) from her past?
• Does Red Noise find it more important to keep the System free of pain and suffering, or is it more important that she is the source of their relief? In other words, does Noise value Cyndi (wellbeing), or her relationship with Cyndi (power)?
• Are Cyndi's psychotic episodes something for which medication will ALWAYS be necessary? Could there be a therapy-based way to control or eliminate them? If so, then it means it's one less expense she'll have to cover when she tries to become independent from her family.
• Could these psychotic episodes stem from childhoold PTSD and could Cognitive Processing Therapy be used to help eliminate them, or reduce their severity?
• Could there be any link between the timeline of Cyndi's mental health problems, and that of her gender transition? Again, I can't know for sure, but that flood of hormones can't exactly be good for someone's mental stability, and her changing social environment also has some pretty likely links to transitioning.
• Where did the Split happen along Cyndi's transition timeline? Did other people begin to acknowledge her as a girl before or after it occurred?
• Do any of the Colours appear to be acting as memory keepers for anything terrible that happened in their childhood? What about Noise?
• If Cyndi is, in fact, "really" dissociative, then which of the colours is the Core, if any? What could have been the nature of the ongoing abuse or neglect which primed the brain for dissociation? Is narcissistic abuse enough to cause true dissociation of identity, or is there something else going on?
• What is the origin of the rotting feeling? How does its intensity vary across Colours, and does the intensity correlate with any one of the Big 5 traits? (still need to test Blake, Whitney and Ashley for their results as of this version of the Manual) I predict a strong direct correlation between Neuroticism and the intensity of the Rotting, but maybe that's just too obvious and banal to be useful.
• Is the Rotting related to the phenomenon of "Body Memories" proposed by Ross Rosenberg, around the 13-20 minute mark of the Youtube video, "Gaslighting: It Started In your Childhood"?

Recommendations:

• I think the number one theraputic goal should be to focus extensively on investigating the Rotting. This seems to be the key driver for self-harm behaviour, and is also Noise's main defense whenever she tries to justify Cyndi needing to cut. If it can be reduced or elminated, then I'd say that's 90% of the problem dealt with. There is nothing more critical, as far as I'm concerned, than figuring out where this feeling comes from and how to permanently get rid of it.
• Integrating the System into a single personality does not seem to be a requirement for treating self-harm, at least according to a paper I've read entitled, Adapting Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for the Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder by Brad Foote M.D and Kim Van Orden, Ph.D. It might make the process easier, and some of the Colours might desire to integrate, but I know for a fact that Dandy does not wish to, so I don't think it should really be made a focus of future therapy. Eliminating the root causes behind the "need" to cut is much more important.
• Figure out a way to get her parents, or at least her mother, on board with treating her DID as something genuine. Even if it turns out Cyndi isn't suffering from "true" DID, not dismissing the Colours as fantasies made up for attention could provide its own beneficial effects.
• If it turns out that the cutting problem intensifies, put in place a system of daily searches by her parents, with a reduction in the frequency of searches clearly and involably tied to longer and longer "clean streaks." That means that her parents cannot decide to ignore Cyndi's progress and maintain the same level of searching frequency just because they feel like it, because they're paranoid, or as punishment for something else. Of course, all the Colours must know about the system of searches, and the majority must agree to it.
• Get Cyndi an electric razor for her legs. I keep recommending this, over and over again, and getting no feedback from any of the Colours. Some of them seem to deliberately change the subject (or maybe that's just me being paranoid) when I do, or simply ignore the suggestion as though I never made it in the first place.
• Also put a system in place where Cyndi can earn back all the privileges that were stripped away before she went to Vive. As above, the rules in place must state that these privileges can't be taken away for any other reason besides self-harm relapses. The rules must be put in writing, a copy must be given to Palette, and all, or at least most of the Colours should agree to the rules before actually signing any agreements.

11: Contact Information for the Author

I'm aware that this section is probably kind of superfluous, since any serious mental health professional wouldn't be able to directly contact me for confidentiality reasons (and as I've stated above, I'm actually a bit relieved when they handle matters of confidentiality so strictly).

Still...

The author of this document can be contacted at andrew.e.henriquez@gmail.com, or on Discord at PlagueDoctr#8357. Contact hours may vary wildly because of the wildly unpredictable hours of my day job but I should be able to respond within 24 hours.